I gave Jive feedback that I'd like to see this sort of meeting at least semi-formalized. The meetup was extremely interesting and valuable but the cramped/noisy environment of the hotel lobby/bar was not great. It would be great if a dedicated space and promotion in the program could be made available for "birds of a feather" meetups such as this one.

I'm going to work with our event planning team on getting you a dedicated space. Can you give me a rough idea of how many people would attend? The more precise we can get, the better our chances of getting a space reserved.

UPDATE: There will be blog post tomorrow in JiveWorld10, describing all the networking options this year (there will also be an update to the JiveWorld website). From what I can count on this thread (~16-18 folks), I think we'll be able to accommodate you. There will be an area for general networking, as well as optional lounge rooms folks can sign up for 45 minutes at a time, all during the conference. This is but ONE of the many networking opportunities you'll have this year!

Which we will definitely be doing. In fact, if the market next year is similar to now - separate people doing separate roles for internal, external branded communities, and external social Web communities (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) - I'll structure this into three areas.

I got the vibe that everyone really enjoyed the "unconference" feel of the speed networking session (although maybe it was too speedy), but also enjoyed the more facilitated round tables. Any ideas about how to put the two together, if necessary?

I agree!! The Community Manager Roundtable sessions were helpful, but I too had expected there to be an Internal Community Manager meet-up, which was requested in this group, but didn't happen.

Our cultures, adoption strategies, communications, and types of content are so very different, it is tough to find the commonalities between public and internal communities.

I would also like to suggest that future conferences perhaps have a listing of the attendees, or at least the types of communities represented - ie. Technology, Software, Government, etc, and break it into internal/external... so that you could at least try to find people to talk with that are in your same situation, targeting the same types of users.

We had the Networking Lounge available for anyone who wanted to meet at any time, about anything. We figured the internal community managers would decided to congregate there at some point, even after participatng in the speed networking and/or the round tables. We need to do a better job of advertising the availability of the Networking Lounge next year, clearly.

But, what I'm also hearing is that you'd want Jive to handle this even more next year? What are your thoughts about incorporating this detailed slicing and dicing of the community manager role+internal/external/Web+industry discussion "moments" with lunchtime?

I would provide a little more structure for the speed networking. Most of the ones I was involved with devolved into a few individual discussions or "jive trading card/iPad drawing" trading. A little more who/what/why/where for the entire table would be better.

Also, the rooms were awfully small given the number of attendees (a good problem) at least for community managers. These were clearly the most popular. Separating external / internal would be a good way to spread out the crowd. I was disappointed the "geography" based speed date I tried was not well attended.

At Omniture conferences that I've attended, they have "birds of a feather" lunches. Basically, they put little cards on tables so that people can try and sit with people that have similar industries. And at the very least, this gives people a place to start a conversation. And then those that have multiple industries can sit at whichever table they want, or (if they send more than one person) do a divide and conquer. It seemed to work well there, as we got more table-side conversations started instead of people pairing off for discussion.

But, what I'm also hearing is that you'd want Jive to handle this even more next year? What are your thoughts about incorporating this detailed slicing and dicing of the community manager role+internal/external/Web+industry discussion "moments" with lunchtime?

The feedback I gave on my post-event survey was that yes having Jive-sponsored time for this would be really useful. My recommendation would be to have these open during the first day, where there is often "not a lot to do" especially in the case of this year when there wasn't much new to see in the Jive Showcase, or if you didn't want to attend Rick's training sessions (which were good to hold, by the way).

In other words, something like the round-table but that is an open discussion format and held during a time that does not conflict with track sessions. Earlier in the conference would be better, to make the connections earlier.

Yeah I'm on board with the day 1 idea too. It seems like many people who are shy like myself (the anti-social, social peeps) will mingle more before and after other sessions if they have already met a bunch of people on day 1.

While I used the first day catching up with all the Jive guys show casting the latest and greatest and having a good one on one discussion about it, this would be a good time to facilitate a discussion of small'ish groups of like minded community managers. The 'speed dating' was valuable to get introduced to others and the 'swap a card' idea really helped to get started. But the time was far too short for achieving anything more specific.

I think the roundtable format was good, but you had to notice it was an option against a track session which made it now as well high-lighted. It would be nice to have an hour devoted to the roundtables so you don't have to pick what to miss.

Totally understand the desire to have roundtables, or more specifically, an "unconference" at a time that doesn't conflict with anything else.

The only thing that concerns me is how to accommodate probably 1,000 or more people next year in a way that CAN be facilitated, and that promotes conversation in smaller groups. 100 10-chair tables, with 100 facilitators. This is one reason the round tables were offered at the same time as track sessions - they were viewed simply as another track, and all the tracks compete with one another for time.

But, if a dedicated Unconference period of time is where we are headed, and we somehow deliver enough physical space to give 1,000 people enough intimacy to make it useful, expect me to come after some of you to be those facilitators, like Jem did for us this year (thanks, Jem!)

DISCLAIMER: what I say in this thread DOES NOT represent the final decisions about what Jive will or will not do next year. I am simply a member of this community, too, and am ideating along with the rest of you (I am, however, certainly taking this back to Jive Marketing, especially since I'm probably going to be in charge of these networking moments again next year. )

But, if a dedicated Unconference period of time is where we are headed, and we somehow deliver enough physical space to give 1,000 people enough intimacy to make it useful, expect me to come after some of you to be those facilitators, like Jem did for us this year (thanks, Jem!)

That's completely fair. I know Jive has done some similar things during their occasional regional user group events.

Another concern is that we slice and dice this too much, thereby reducing the impact of cross-industry and cross-firewall sharing. I know many internal community managers who've learned great marketing techniques from their external community manager counterparts, for example. Ditto goes for cross-industry.

It's just like your Jive platform structure - sub-divide it too much, and you end up dissipating the communal effect you may have been hoping for.

That's one of unexpected 'confluences' when having a broad community. From an individual point of view this can be fantastic - as you described it Gia. That can also be frustrating in a 'live' environment where a meeting with more than a dozen people doesn't allow all to contribute / learn to the same extent.

A number of conferences allocate time for pre-conference workshops that can be booked in addition. That would give Jive the knowledge of how many will attend a specific workshop and provide the ability allocating sufficient resource (room[s], facilitator[s], ..). From an attendee perspective you know who else signed up, you know you're in, you know there's sufficient time, and it doesn't conflict with the core conference. Specific topics may also be submitted allowing for an agenda refinement. Plus some seasoned Jive'ers (next year we will be using it for 2 years) may volunteer to facilitate those workshops.

This format doesn't stop an internal community manager to attend a workshop for external managers. One could also allow for installations that focus on a technical environment compared to a service orientated.

Now, that's an interesting idea. I know Susan's folks at the 2.0 Adoption Council, led by my pal Megan Murray, did a phenomenal workshop session the day before Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this past year.

Perhaps we could do the roundtables on Day 0, if you will, and that way, folks can choose to sign up to come a day early, and we can just plan for those who do, as you suggest.